Sunday, 17 June 2012

The Rabid Prophet / a little knowledge ain't always..

Missed this weekend's Zizek book launch in Dalston, Hackney. It's hard to
believe that a 1000-odd page book on Hegel is a cause for sybaritic revels.
Not wishing to cast general aspersions but it is unlikely that the Dalston Jugendstil
have read much of their prophet, or, after all the beer swilling, will really
have time for Hegel either. Anyway, swipes aside, more importantly:
This week in a Europe where football gets more thought...
On this day - of the Greek election which may decide the future of the single european economy;
Something interesting Zizek said in the L.R.B. last week about the eurozone and choice :

"Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake may be corrected. When George Papandreou, then Greek prime minister, proposed a referendum on the eurozone bailout deal at the end of last year, the referendum itself was rejected as a false choice". ...."Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake may be corrected." ('Save us from the Saviours' 07/06/12)

I think here the prophet spake well.

Not wanting to nit-pick, but in the same publication (Resistance is Surrender 15/11/07)
and in the letters that follow theres a lot of toing and froing about the intellectual left being
whores to power. It is obvious there is a liberal elite when you find yourself reading these
profound theses in a subscriber-only publication which has joyously, if not excruciating, long pieces.
As far as the great proletariat are concerned, one notes the journalism they tend to follow are not the manna of the intellectual elites, being of the star, mirror & sun varieties, nonethelessred-topped but eschewed by those who consider themselves in the know.